Roosevelt's declaration that Americans had 'nothing to fear but fear itself' was a glorious piece of inspirational rhetoric and just as gloriously wrong.

It is much easier to modify an opinion if one has not already persuasively declared it.

David H. Souter

Fools make feasts and wise men eat them.

Benjamin Franklin

I broke a mirror in my house. I'm supposed to get seven years of bad luck, but my lawyer thinks he can get me five.

Steven Wright

To separate children from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.

Earl Warren

The life that I have lived was no more than a mask covering the real me. What has happened was not to kill me but to reveal me.

E'yen A. Gardner

The contribution of Islam to history and modern civilization is the product of the efforts of peoples of many races and tongues which came to accept its way of life.

Aly Khan

As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We expect everything and are prepared for nothing.

Madame Swetchine

People love pretty much the same things best. A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.

Annie Dillard

Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.

George Gurdjieff

Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote, And think they grow immortal as they quote.

Edward Young

An excellent man, like precious metal, is in every way invariable; A villain, like the beams of a balance, is always varying, upwards and downwards, himself his own dungeon.

Saskya Pandita